


all my days i'll know your face

by jamesstruttingpotter



Series: half of my soul, as the poets say [1]
Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Finale, Post-Season/Series 03, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:22:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22384036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesstruttingpotter/pseuds/jamesstruttingpotter
Summary: “Springtime,” says Rachel Lynde, ominous, “is for lovers.”
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Series: half of my soul, as the poets say [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048768
Comments: 13
Kudos: 288





	all my days i'll know your face

**Author's Note:**

> I'm honestly devastated by the fact that this show has gotten cancelled, and tried to make myself feel better by writing some short fic. Hope you like it!

If Marilla Cuthbert had been a more fanciful person, she would have sworn there was something in the very air the first morning of Anne’s spring holiday.

If Anne Shirley-Cuthbert had been a less fanciful person, she would not have bounded down the Green Gables staircase that morning, proclaiming the very same thing.

“Oh, can you _feel_ it, Marilla? Good morning, Matthew! There’s something in the air of this place, this beautiful, magnificent abode, this humble, unmarred _paean_ to the beauty of the nature that surrounds us - “

“Alright now, that’s enough of that,” Marilla says, perhaps slightly less brisk than usual, and sets down a plate of toast. “My goodness, they really are teaching you quite the vocabulary at Queens. _Paean_ , indeed.”

“I can’t help it,” Anne says, as soon as her first mouthful of toast has disappeared. “Oh, I love Queens, I do, but you both of all people must know that Green Gables - dear Green Gables! - is where my heart truly belongs.”

“We’re glad to hear it,” Marilla says, settling into her own seat. Matthew pushes the jam jar closer to Anne’s questing fingertips. “You know, it really has been quiet around here without you lately, Anne.”

“Oh, I’ll liven this place up plenty over the next fortnight. I was thinking, Marilla, wouldn’t it be lovely if we invited some old friends over for some tea? It’s really has been an age since I’ve seen - “

This is interrupted by a sharp rap at the door, which then promptly opens to admit Mrs. Rachel Lynde. Anne, free-flowing hair and nightgown notwithstanding, leaps up to sweep the rather startled woman into a tight embrace.

“Absence does make the heart fonder, then, hmm?” Rachel remarks, but reaches to smooth a palm against Anne’s cheek. “Welcome home, dear.”

“Tea, Rachel?” Marilla asks, already getting up to fetch another cup.

“If you don’t mind. Good morning, Matthew,” she adds, to which he mutters something about milking before standing up. Anne watches him go with a knowing grin.

Once Rachel’s settled in his vacated seat with her tea and a slice of toast, she starts, “I’ve come to discuss Moody Spurgeon and Ruby Gillis.”

Anne straightens up from her own breakfast. “Moody and Ruby? Why, Mrs. Lynde, I didn’t think you cared about schoolgirl gossip!”

“Schoolgirl gossip? Hardly,” Rachel sniffs. “The fact of the matter is, your little cohort is of age now. Of age to be seriously courting, that is.”

Something like a smile plays at the corners of Marilla’s mouth as she steadfastly refuses to look at Anne. “Already, Rachel? Surely not.”

“What do you mean, _already_? Your Anne’s seventeen years old, maybe months away from getting snatched up by some sly young man in Charlottetown. You’d better keep a sharp eye, Marilla, or she’ll be at an altar before you can blink.”

“I should go get dressed,” the prospective bride says hastily, pushing back from the table. A deep red flush spreads to the back of her neck as she rushes back upstairs.

Marilla hides a smile in stirring some milk into her tea.

Rachel watches Anne shrewdly, and as her footsteps fade toward the far corner of the house, turns on her remaining companion with a familiar gleam in her eye. “Now tell me plain, Marilla. Has Anne mentioned any young man at all? Someone she’s met at Queens, perhaps?”

“Whatever’s put that thought into your mind?”

“Oh, I can recognize a girl in love when I see it. Especially this time of year.”

Marilla sets her cup down. “What could you possibly mean, this time of year?”

“Springtime,” says Rachel Lynde, ominous, “is for lovers.”

Marilla can’t find it within herself to come up with an appropriate response.

Anne returns downstairs after a half-hour, respectably kitted out in a fresh dress and a loose chignon. Marilla remembers her two childhood plaits half-wistfully as she looks at the young woman in front of her before dunking the rest of the plates into the washbasin.

“I’m expecting a letter from Ka’kwet soon,” Anne announces, ignoring Rachel’s clucks of disapproval. “Her father says she’s well enough to go foraging now, and I’m hoping to find some time to look for pretty things together in the forests.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Marilla promises. A flash of brown curls suddenly appear in the windowpane before the sink, and she turns to see the back of Gilbert Blythe’s head as he knocks on their front door. Rachel, in the middle of taking another sip of tea, perks up at the sound.

“Gilbert,” comes Anne’s voice from the entryway, and Marilla spares a thought for how remarkably terrible her daughter is at hiding her sentimental tone. “I wasn’t expecting you so early. Or - “ a throat is cleared - “I mean, I wasn’t expecting you at all today.”

“Weren’t expecting me?” Gilbert’s tone is half-teasing. “Why, Anne, you had to have known that as soon as I got back from Toronto, I’d - Mrs. Lynde! What a - a wonderful surprise.”

“Hmm. Surprise, is it?” Rachel’s tone is altogether too smug. “I can see that well enough. Marilla, I’ll just leave my teacup here, shall I? I should be getting back to Thomas.”

She bustles out, and a few moments pass before two tentative faces peek around the corner.

“Do you think she figured it out?” Anne asks.

Marilla snorts. “You’ll be lucky if the news isn’t in Charlottetown by lunchtime. Have you had breakfast, Gilbert?”

“I have, thank you ma’am,” he replies, and Anne turns to stare at him.

“Since when has Marilla been a ma’am to you?”

“Well,” starts Gilbert, before looking down at his hands. A small smile is tucked into the corner of his mouth. “I just thought I’d do things proper, is all.”

“Marilla is just fine,” the woman herself says. “As if we haven’t been practically family for an age. Your courting doesn’t change that.” When this elicits no response other than a deepening flush on Anne’s face and a slightly larger smile on Gilbert’s, Marilla places her hands on her hips. “My, if calling it courting doesn’t prompt you both to start hurling denials at me, things must be quite serious.”

Anne controls herself for a second more before nearly flinging herself at her shawl. “Shall we take a walk, Gil?” she asks, tone nearly desperate.

He responds by offering an arm; Marilla watches them set off fondly past Green Gables’ gate.

* * *

“Tell me more about Queens,” Gilbert says as they stroll along the old path to the schoolhouse, slower than Anne has perhaps ever taken it. The air is lush and crisp against her cheeks, and the crook of his elbow is warm.

“Haven’t you gotten enough information from the tomes I write you every week?” she says, grinning.

“You could write me every day and I’d still want to know more. Is your landlady truly that strict? How awful exactly is your maths professor? Have you ever worn that blue dress again?”

“I’m sensing you’re more interested in one particular question.”

“To be fair, I’ve been thinking of the way you looked that afternoon every day for months. I’ve never seen you like that.”

“Wasn’t it a magnificent dress? Marilla does have the most perfect imagination when she puts her mind to it.”

Gilbert stops to consider her. She’s wearing a soft cotton dress in dark brown, a light grey shawl draped across her shoulders. An early spring bloom is tucked behind her ear, fresh and white against the red of her hair.

“I love this Anne best,” he decides, and the surety of his voice makes her flush.

“Tell me more about Toronto,” she says. “A city, Gil, a real city! It must be beautiful. Did Bash and Dellie like it? He says he likes Avonlea best, but it must have been an absolute wonder during Christmas. Oh, and tell me about your studies, of course! You know I’m terribly interested in the research you’re doing, even if I’m not quite bright enough to be earning a medical degree.”

This last bit is said in a teasing tone as they round the corner to the old schoolhouse’s lot, fresh-built with new white wood, and Gilbert shakes his head on a laugh. “And here lies the hallowed ground on which Anne Shirley-Cuthbert thoroughly best me at many a lesson, whether it was spelling, maths, or the creation of potato lightbulbs.”

“I did, didn’t I? Although I still think it’s a wonder that we tied for first on our Queens entrance exams. There’s something a bit poetical about it.”

They meander slowly across the dirt path to the small creek, still babbling along as always, slightly wider from the ice melt farther upstream. Anne finds the hollow in which they’d always put their milk bottles with a practiced eye.

“Things are ever so different than they were a year ago,” she muses, and Gilbert’s hand comes to rest on hers in the crook of his elbow.

“I’d say better,” he replies. “On the whole.”


End file.
